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U. S. Route 50
Introduction Ladies and Gentlemen, Our journey has begun. I'm still learning how to write, but I know where this story is going, and I'm inviting you along to enjoy the ride. This is basically a first draft; constructive criticism is always welcome. Whether you're reading this in a subway station or a bus stop, front porch or attic, or some other less atmospheric location, I want to make you feel part of this world where people can fly, if they know how, and if they're willing to put their lives on the line to fight for it. That's U. S. Route 50, and who knows? It might be the real world. At least for these few hours we have together, let's pretend it is. Part One Chapter One: Out Here Utah, July 1973 A flash of gleaming scarlet rushed past, rattling the desert scrub with a dry wind in its wake. They were the only plants that survived this place, where red sand and rocky outcroppings stretched across the flat landscape to clash with a china-blue sky on the stark, straight horizon. Out here, U. S. Route 50 was the only thin strip of civilization that existed, and even the Route was only that: a route, a path, a place from which to get to other places. And the red pickup truck was searching for such a place, somewhere along the edge of the sizzling blacktop. In the back of the truck sat a man in a black leather jacket, holding a green duffle bag and looking out at the desert passing by. His clothes looked beat-up, the leather cracking and dusty, his jeans torn, scuffed and faded. His face was scruffy and tired, with a five-o'clock shadow covering his jaw, but his short hair; hard, vertical lines between his eyebrows, and alert expression suggested something of a human German Shepherd. Suddenly he locked his eyes on something in the desert, sat up and peered out at it. A few dozen yards away, there was something blue lying in the dust. At first he thought it might be a tarp or a tent, but as he looked closer he realized it was a dress, and there was a woman wearing it, lying on the ground as if asleep. "Hey! Driver! Stop the car!" He shouted. The truck didn't slow down. "Hey!" He thumped the cab with his hand a few times. A face popped out of the driver's window. "What!?" The driver asked. "There's somebody out there, stop the car!" He said. The driver slumped back into his seat and turned the truck. It eased onto the side of the road, slowing to a stop. The man in the back hopped out with his bag and walked to the front. "What was it, now?" The driver asked with a furrowed brow. "There's somebody out there, just lying in the desert. I'm gonna go check it out, they gotta need help or something." The driver scratched his nose. "Alright buddy, make it quick. I ain't got all day here." He didn't seem to care much, and the traveler was fairly sure he was drunk. Oh well, ''he thought. ''The perils of hitchhiking. Gotta do what you gotta do. '' He slung his bag over his shoulder and trotted across the highway, then slowed down to a careful walk as he stepped around the brush and rocks, making his way through the wilderness. In the back of the truck, he had the wind rushing around him, but now the air was still, heavy and oven-hot. He took off his jacket and stuffed it in his bag, but he was still breathing hard and wiping sweat from his forehead when he got there. When he saw her, though, he forgot about all the inconvenience she had caused him. She wasn't a woman; she was a little girl in a sky-blue dress, with a livid sunburn. She looked around ten years old. The man bent down and shook her gently, but she didn't wake up. He felt her wrists and neck. Her heart was beating, and she was breathing, but she wasn't merely asleep; she was out cold. She might not even survive this. A thousand questions arose in the man's head: ''Who would have left her out here like this? There's nothing around here for hundreds of miles. Did someone just dump her here? But why bring her this far out from the road? And if they were trying to kill her, why leave her alive? It's not like anyone just goes out for a hike around here, of course it would be suspicious, and they had to have known she was visible from the road! Did she come out here by choice? Why? '' ''Oh well, ''he concluded. ''The main thing is to get her to a hospital, fast. '' The man adjusted his bag, crouched down again and lifted her up. He turned around and started walking back towards the truck. He looked up at the two black lines of the Route, stretching across the land from horizon to horizon, uninterrupted. The truck was gone, and the man and the girl were alone. The man stared for a moment in utter disbelief, then gritted his teeth as fire flowed through his veins. He made a conscious effort to keep from gripping the girl too hard, as he felt the desperate need to strangle someone. He kicked the ground hard, scuffing up dust with his boot. "Damn! It!" he seethed. Tears stung his eyes. He tried to calm down, and took a few deep breaths. There was nothing he could do but keep walking. Carrying the girl though this desert would be a good way to die of heat exhaustion, but he would just have to hang on to the blind faith that someone would drive past and rescue them. He made his way back to the highway and trudged alongside it with stubborn resolution, almost as if surviving this would be spitting in the face of that pickup's driver. And surviving seemed like a pretty good idea anyway; it's not as if he had anything better to do. He smiled at the thought. He had no reason to complain, really. This was all he had, at the moment; it was all there was and that would have to be okay. If no one drove past, he would die trying to get this girl to a hospital. He could live with a death like that. So he kept walking and didn't waste time feeling sorry for himself. It would be a long walk. - - - He had no idea how many hours of trudging and aching heels and sweaty pants and aching, throbbing shoulders had passed as he carried her and trudged along through the dry dust. Maybe it wasn’t hours; maybe it was minutes. It felt like forever. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The sun had become his world, the dry heat and the blank landscape his whole existence. He had come to some kind of reconciliation with his death. He never thought in his life that he would ever be this philosophical, but the time had given him so much time to think and he could hardly avoid it: he started to think about what death would be like. He told himself he didn't care, but underneath that there was a desperation, a screaming plea to not die. Not yet. He knew he had left things unfinished. He knew that he hadn't accomplished a fraction of what he wanted in life. Not for himself; not for others. What would he say when he arrived at the pearly gates? "I got by? I stuck it through?" What had he done? Precisely nothing. He had fought in a war that he didn't believe in, just for a few brainless hippies to spit on him and for a lousy paycheck that eventually left him on the street. He hadn't made a lasting relationship with any females. His family had passed out of his life and any communication with him a decade ago. He was already approaching the later years of his thirties, and he should have been in the prime of his life and he knew it, but he was feeling old. And he was feeling worthless. The little girl in his arms was, right now, the only thing that he thought he could do. A wrong he could right. Something to accomplish. And now they'd both die out here. What a life. What a wonderful life. It was near sunset when a distant hum began to turn into a roar. He had hardly dared to hope, but when it became too loud and too clear to ignore, he risked turning his head back for a look. There was a car in the distance. Just a glimpse. A glimpse of a bright, gleaming thing that flashed in the sun and flew across the highway like an angel coming to rescue them. He started laughing. Out there in the desert, surrounded by nothing, panting in the dry imperious heat, he started laughing because he needed this car to rescue him from death, and the absurd melodrama of the situation just hit him. Before long, the lean, purple convertible had flown ahead of them, kicking up a cloud of dust, and swerved to a stop in a half-sideways, diagonal position a few yards in front of them. The man stood where he was. The driver's door clicked open and a woman launched herself out. She was very tall, bronze-skinned, and dressed with bell-bottom jeans that came all the way up over her waist to fasten around the middle of her abdomen, and a frilly yellow shirt above, tucked in beneath it. A red handkerchief held back the cascade of wavy black hair that reached down over her shoulders behind her. She jogged up to them. "You look like you need some help." She shouted with a broad smile. "Ya think?" "Here, let me see" the woman said, coming close and feeling the little girl’s forehead, "what happened to her?" He didn't entirely want to, especially not in such an urgent situation, but he could hardly help noticing how incredibly beautiful she was. "Look," he said, "unless you're a doctor then I don't need your advice, I need a ride to a hospital, and fast. Can you do that?" The woman looked up at him with a flashing glare. "A please and thank you wouldn't hurt any, mister. What's your name anyway?" "Russo. Now can we get in the car or should I keep marching on my feet? . . . ''please." She rolled her eyes as she started walking back towards the car, keeping her body turned sideways to talk to Russo. "I'm Cielo." She said, sticking her hand out and shaking Russo's hand beneath the girl, as Russo let it hang limply. He had no qualms about letting her know how pissed he was and he was rather frustrated with how she seemed more concerned with chit-chat than with the urgent matter at hand. “So what are you two doing all the way out here?” Cielo asked as Russo settled in the passenger seat and the engine hummed to life. "I don't know. She was just out there in the sun. I found her there. And I'm just passing through this hellhole, that's all." "Funny, we're here for the same reasons." Cielo replied. "What's that?" “She was out in the sun.” He said. “I found her. I don’t know what she was doing out there. And I’m not here for anything. Just passing through this hellhole, that’s all.” “Funny, we’re here for the same reasons.” Cielo replied. “What's that?” “Just passing through.” "Just passing through." “Yeah.” Russo sighed, letting his head lean back against the headrest. The breeze felt good as the car rocketed across the highway. Cielo switched the radio on and let it play loud, filling the desert with rock and roll. --- Russo woke up from a shallow doze to the gravelly sound of the car swinging into a space in a dirt parking lot. The sky was deep red and getting black in the east as the sun disappeared, but the diner in front of them cast a pool of warm, yellow light around it. It had been a bright, shiny, futuristic design in the late 1950's, built in the "googie" style, optimistic and exuberant. The low, horizontal building was capped by a bright red, shed roof which soared up and away from the low right side, out towards huge expanses of plate glass on the left. Walls and columns alternated between red and white; in fact, all it would have taken was some blue paint to make the diner resemble the Stars and Stripes. A big, gaudy sign dominated the parking lot, as if even more than the building's already loud display were required to draw eyes from the highway. SUNSHINE it proclaimed, with Family Diner underneath. Cielo hopped out of the driver’s side and came around to open up the passenger door. “I’ll get her.” She said as she picked up the girl, then walked on towards the diner. “Come on.” She said, tossing her head toward the door. Russo blinked and tried to shake the drowsiness from his head. It wasn’t only that; it was the sharp headache and weak body that made it difficult for him to get out of the car and trot ahead of Cielo to open the door for her. But he didn’t think of things that way. Russo did not deal with pain by acknowledging it; he dealt with pain by ignoring it and if necessary, by taking it out on others. He was not thinking that he needed to rest. He was thinking that he was angry and frustrated. He pulled the plate-glass door open and let Cielo and the girl through before coming in himself. The same red and white color scheme dominated the interior, splashed across walls, ceilings, the plastic seat cushions and Formica tabletops, lined with shining chrome. The smell of pancakes and bacon seemed to be soaked into the surfaces. The windows seemed even more expansive inside the diner; it felt like being inside a dry aquarium. In the middle of everything there was a counter with barstools lined up along it, behind which was a checkerboard-tiled wall hiding the kitchen. No one was there. The entire place was empty. The terrifying thought that the place was abandoned flickered through the man's mind, but he dismissed it just as quickly, because the place was cold, colder than Everest and twice as windy, with a groaning AC. His sweat-soaked clothes were becoming an icy, wet straight-jacket. He shuddered. The girl probably didn't feel any better, or wouldn't have, if she had been awake. Cielo was laying her on the counter, shoving aside little napkin boxes and salt-and-pepper shakers. Some of them fell off and rattled around on the floor. Russo lifted his duffle bag off and pushed it under the girl's feet to elevate her legs. "Hey PEOPLE! We need some help out here!" He shouted. "Anybody home!?" There were rustling noises from somewhere in the back, and then a heavyset, middle-aged woman wearing a white apron shuffled out. "You got a phone?" Russo demanded. "Look, she needs to get to a hospital. She must have passed out from heat stroke; she was already out three hours ago, it's a miracle she's still alive." She held up her palm to slow him down and nodded, saying: "I know, I know; I’ve had to deal with this kind of thing before. It’s okay; she’ll be fine, right Cielo?" Russo’s eyebrows shot up and he glanced at Cielo. Cielo nodded. “I don’t know when they’ll be back, but I know we have to wait for them.” “What?” Russo said. It wasn’t so much a question as it was a statement: a statement of the utter perplexity he was feeling. For the one thing, how did these people know each other, and for another, why were they even thinking of “waiting” on anything? “She has to get to a hospital, now!” He insisted. “Look mister, if her friends” she gestured towards Cielo, “Take longer than an hour to get here, then we’ll leave without them. And if we do that, then we’ll be dealing with low gas and very little protection and on top of that no guidance and almost no communication. I know exactly what we are dealing with here and I am doing my absolute best to keep it together. So you can stop acting like you’re the only adult here.” There was a rather long silence after that as Russo tried and failed to reply. He realized how tightly he had been gripping the edge of the counter, and backed away, taking a deep breath and bringing his hand up to cover his mouth as he released a shuddering sigh. “I’m sorry.” He said. “I just don’t want her to die.” “It’s okay.” Cielo told him. “She’ll be fine.” The lady behind the counter extended her hand. “I’m Donna.” She said. Russo took it. “Russo.” Donna nodded. “Looks like you already met Cielo. I’m going to do my best to keep this girl alive and then we’re going to wait.” She glanced behind her at a clock. 7:26 P.M. “For exactly . . . fifty-seven minutes.” She said, then ambled into the back. There was a minute or so more of nerve-racking inactivity as the man paced back and forth. He could hear water and clinking noises in the back. Donna came back out with two full pitchers of water. Quite nonchalantly, she leaned over the counter and poured the water onto the girl, making sure to pour it all evenly and not run out. The man watched as the water pooled and dripped in tendrils over the counter and formed shining puddles on the floor. When she had finished, she looked up at him, and said, "Now we wait." "There's nothing else. . . ?" "Unless you got a better idea, then no." She said. "There's nothing else we can do. I've seen this kind of thing a lot before, and trust me, it only gets worse when people start messing around without a doctor." "Alright, well. . . you want me to help clean up some of this water on the floor and all?" He offered. "I got some towels, I'll do it. You best go over there and sit yourself down. I think you may have forgotten that you were out there, too." He relented and sat down on the edge of a booth as she disappeared into the back again. He winced at the damp touch of his back to the seat cushion. It made it more obvious how much he'd been sweating, and that was something he had been trying to avoid thinking about. Cielo came over and dropped into the cushion across the table from him. “Some day, huh?” She offered. Russo just nodded, looking out the window at the flat landscape the horizon flatten to a thin glowing line as the last of the sunset ebbed out. Donna came out with another pitcher full of water in one hand, and two glasses in the other. "Here," she said, setting them down on the table. She poured both glasses so full that the surface of the water was level with the top of the glass. Russo had always wondered how waitresses could do that; it seemed like a circus trick. His fingers curled around the cold glass, damp with condensation, but he couldn't bring himself to take a drink from it. It seemed too soon, or maybe it was just one of those weird feelings that contradict every law of self-preservation, thoughts that tell you to jump off the cliff, or sometimes to refuse a drink even though you're dead thirsty, parched. Being parched just felt safer, safer than taking the plunge into the cold wet again. It felt almost wrong, even though he knew he had to do it. And then there was the girl, would she get a drink? She was already dying. He shoved the thoughts away. There was nothing he could do about any of it, nothing except take a drink. He raised the glass to his lips and took a sip. It felt weird, but better. He swallowed. He licked his lips. "So how do you two," He gestured between Cielo in front of him and Donna, who had walked back behind the counter, "Know each other?" "I pass through a lot." Cielo replied. "It's become sort of a policy to stop by here, or a tradition, whenever we come." He took another few sips, feeling his throat be moist again. It no longer hurt to speak. "And 'we' is . . . ?" “Just my friends. We come here often." Russo shrugged his shoulders and sat back in the booth. A group of people that travel around and eat at a certain diner so often that a waitress knew them by name sounded like hippies to him. Or maybe they were a band. Maybe both. Either way, he resolved not to let the little girl out of his sight until he knew she was in good hands, rather than in the clutches of some group of weirdos. He hadn’t signed up for this. He had signed up for . . . what, exactly? Even he couldn’t answer that. He had been out looking for something, anything, like a knight-errant of old. And he had found it: a quest. It just seemed so infuriatingly complicated. There was a damsel in distress, but where was the monster? Where were the clear rules, the code of chivalry, the steed, the shining armor? Where was the predictability the old tales had promised? Why couldn't it just be simple? Cielo made a few more attempts at small talk, but they fizzled out quickly. Russo’s replies were always terse and became more so as time went on. He wanted to be left in peace with his thoughts. Eventually, Cielo left him to it, going behind the counter to sit down with Donna. The sun outside disappeared, leaving the restaurant alone as the only source of warm light in the cold, black night. Russo almost fell asleep several times. Shortly after 8:00, he was hunched over the counter, breathing in the steam of a half-full mug of coffee and tapping his fingers, trying not to fall asleep. Two people walked in. One of them was a lanky man in a wine-colored turtleneck, with a lean, sharp face and a bald head. The other was a massive man whose height must have been at least six and a half feet, wearing a fedora hat cinched low over his face and a huge brown trenchcoat covering his entire body. He wore gloves as well, and his face was so shadowy that almost no part of him was visible at all. It would have looked funny if not for his sheer imposing size. They walked over to the counter. Cielo got up from where she had been sitting behind it and shook the big man’s hand. “Good evening, Madam. How bad is she?” He asked. “Well, she’s not great. We need to leave right now.” Cielo said. The big man picked up the girl and turned to walk out the door as Russo stood up, feeling entirely out of the loop. “Who’s this?” He asked. Cielo turned to him as they all walked towards the door. “These are my friends: Levy,” she angled her head up at the big man, “and Jason.” she angled her head toward the skinny man. Levy simply turned his head toward Russo and nodded. Jason stepped back and offered Russo his hand. Russo took it and they shook. Jason shook firmly, giving a broad smile. “Good to meet you, Russo.” He said. “This is where we part ways.” Cielo said. Jason had already stepped ahead and pushed open the door, and Levy was standing in the doorway with the girl in his arms. “Nice knowing you, Mr. Russo.” “Wait, hold on, I’m not staying here!” Russo proclaimed. “Well, you’re not coming with us.” Cielo chuckled. “I’m going wherever she goes.” Russo said, pointing to the girl. “And I ain’t got a ride anyway.” He finished, spreading his arms. The big man in the doorway spoke up. He used a different voice than the one he spoke to Cielo with. This voice was lower, deeper and even sounded angry. But it was measured; spoken slowly and deliberately. “Jason, will he be a problem?” Jason left the door and they all came back inside. Russo was uneased to find himself forced to step back as Levy towered over him. Jason came forward and look toward Russo, but avoided eye contact. He furrowed his brow and licked his lips more than once. Russo stared at this proceeding with an open jaw. If he had only suspected that these people were weird before, now he was sure of it. They were either druggies or cultists. Jason finally spoke up. “There’s a risk. There’s always a risk. But he looks good. Honest. Decent. Loyal.” He paused for a second, then raised a finger and smiled, finishing with: “Very stubborn.” “Good enough. Let’s go.” Levy concluded. “Gee, thanks Jase.” Russo said. “Did my mother tell you to say that or did you come up with it all by yourself?” Levy turned back suddenly. “Enough! You may leave anytime you like. I am only tolerating your presence.” “Okay! Fine. Geez.” They walked out into the parking lot and took the girl to a dark blue van. Well, maybe kidnappers of some kind, too. Add that to my list of possible things these people are. Russo didn’t like the idea of getting in there with the girl. He was fairly sure he could overpower Cielo and Jason, but he didn’t like his chances against Levy, who was apparently their enforcer or bouncer or whatever. But there was only one other option. Well, two options: he could try to grab the little girl and get away somehow, but . . . no. There was no chance of that. The second option was to try to get to ride with the girl in the convertible like they came. That would be safer. “Hey, why don’t me and the girl ride in the convertible like we came? That way the breeze . . .” Russo suggested, but trailed off as they ignored him, Levy putting the girl in the back of the van with Jason and walking to the driver’s seat of the van, and Cielo hopping into her convertible. “No.” Levy said. There was nothing else he could think of to try. No way out. No way sideways. Just one path. Keep the little girl safe. Russo had done way stupider things for far more dubious reasons. He climbed into the back of the van and shut the door.